[olug] SAN Information

[roger schmeits]

Ok. lets say we build the SANs. Buy all the hardware ans so forth. Dont
you need software to interface with the different o/s?

That where it gets pricey right?  I understand the hardware part but I
thought there had to something in between the servers.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Congrads on building your own SANs ..impressive..


On Fri, 2002-09-27 at 11:09, Rogers, John C NWD02 wrote:
> HI all, 
> I know I have not made it to any meetings and only reply when I think I
> have relevant information so here are some ideas on the SAN.
> 
> At my office I designed and built a Fibre SAN that we use on our Solaris
> boxes.  It was built from scratch so we know every part in it and who
> made it.  In my research there are many vendors but they all would not
> share the basic information with us about who made the controller, what
> FC card are they using, what disk drives, can I get any drive and use
> them...  They like to sell the "System" so you are married to them from
> that point on.
> 
> Well I did not like the fact that if I purchased a 15 bay disk rack with
> say 5 drives populated I had to purchase the drives and canisters from
> the vendor to expand in the future.  So I kept searching because all the
> vendors were charging way over market value for standard off the shelf
> disk drives (just for the hunk of sheet metal that holds the disk). I
> found a very good vendor that produces the actual metal drive enclosure
> and drive canisters.  They will also sell you any controller from a list
> they represent: (CMD Titan Series, Viper Series; Digi-Data Fibre Sabre,
> 9500 Series, 9200 Series, 9100 Series, Fascore; Infortrend EON Series,
> Sentinel Series, IFT-3102 Series, IFT-3101 Series; Chaparral K7413 Fibre
> to SCSI, K5412 Ultra2 to Ultra2.
> 
>   
> I have to say that the metal work and board work on these cabinets is
> first rate, they use three 300 watt power supplies, can do full SAFETY
> monitoring of temperature and other environmental conditions.  We have
> purchased three boxes made by these guys two 18 bay and one 9 bay.  Both
> have been very well made.  Supposedly they built the RAIDs for Yahoo (a
> 9 bay Jaguar with DigiData controllers).  
> 
> Anyway we have about 1.4TB online on our two big racks and 144GB on the
> small rack.  We have a mix of drives from 36GB to the 181GB disks making
> up the tiers/LUNS and have no problems.  We chose the DigiData
> controller SCSI to the disk, Fibre to the host, Emulex LP8000 on the
> host adapter.  You can make them as complicated as you want.  LUN mask,
> mask by WWN or use a smart FC hub or switch (Gadzooks or Emulex).  I
> think we have about $20K in our system so far but can replace disks at
> any time with any size etc for a long life expectancy.
> 
> If you want to know more email me offline and I can go in to the
> specifics.  If you are purchasing for a data center and want turn key
> then I would look into the Sun T3 or A1000 or EMC and Hitachi but be
> ready for the sticker shock.  In those environments you are definitely
> purchasing a "system" but it all depends on your expectations and
> requirements.
> 
> Hope I helped, 
> John 
> 
> Links are http://www.adjile.com <http://www.adjile.com>  for the racks
> and http://www.digidata.com <http://www.digidata.com>  for our
> controller. 
>